July 03, 2016

Cheesecake -- Happiness is a happy model!

Bettie Page is a legendary cheescake model who remains popular despite the
fact that she did her modeling more than 50 years ago. She was good looking and
had a nice figure but there have been many models before and since who did, too.
What made Page stand out was the fact that she seemed to be completely
comfortable doing what she was doing. She looked like she was having fun.

Too many models look bored, or look intimidated, or look outright terrified,
and I gather that some men find that sexy. Not me; it just makes me
uncomfortable. I want the model to look like she is enjoying herself, like she's
happy to be there, happy to be doing the things she's doing, in the (lack of)
clothing she is (not) wearing. I like looking at women but I don't want it to be something that they hate.

Of course, when it's fan art we don't have to worry about that, I suppose. They're just drawings. But
that's still how I feel about it. So today's search term is "happy".

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That was what I always liked about stars like Kitten Natividad or Ashley Juggs. (Aside from the obvious!) They always looked like they aware of how silly what they were doing really was, and just had fun with it.
I've never understood the Japanese fondness for women who look like they'd rather be anywhere else.

Posted by: Brett Bellmore at July 04, 2016 02:32 AM (l55xw)

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In my experience, it's not a stylistic choice to make them look "bored, intimidated, or terrified" (except in certain genres...), it's a combination of inept attempts at "sultry" (which, IMHO, few models can pull off at all before age 30), a lack of interaction between model and photographer, and editors who don't evaluate the picture as a whole.

In the one-and-only group shoot I attended, the model actually thanked me in the middle of the shoot for giving her feedback and compliments. The rest of the group were just silently taking pictures, and relying on her to come up with poses and looks. Most of them had shot her before, but never built up any kind of rapport. Which pretty much sums up why I'd never do another group shoot.

4
For all the blame that cameraman gets in J's testimonial, you can find a Japanese AV model who projects a warm and happy exterior. Akane Sakura was one. It is quite infrequent, but I don't think a different staff attended to different actresses, so it can be done.

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There's a lot of "happy sexy" cheesecake and nudes shot in Japan; it's just hit-or-miss, with the same photoshoot often mixing amazing smiles and glassy-eyed stares. AV DVD cover photos and promo shoots are often downright amazing. To name a personal favorite, Nana Ogura is a smiley cutie who lights up for the camera, but I have no interest in her porn films; they could never deliver what her photos promise.

There's a New York photographer who did a lot of work for Playboy in the Nineties, and some models loved working with him and seeing the results. Others thought he was a creepy perv and hated the way their pictures turned out; they'd rather fly to Atlanta on their own dime to work with Playboy's other major East Coast photographer than let this guy point a camera at them. You can usually guess which camp a model fell into based on a single picture.

June 24, 2016

Cheesecake -- God Save The Queen!

Elizabeth II, God bless her, has been Queen of England (and Scotland and Canada and Australia and Wales and not the United States) my whole life. She just turned 90 and I know no one lives forever, though her line lives remarkably long. The Queen Mother lived to be 102.

Yesterday the voters of the UK decided there should continue to be a UK for Elizabeth to be Queen of. A superb decision, for a lot of reasons, and so in honor of this tremendous achievement today's search term is "Union Jack".

(Full size version) On June 23, 2016, Brits looked at the gold-plated chains offered them by the EU and by their own leaders, turned their backs, and marched away.

I got curious and went back and found that third image again. All those are British shipgirls from the Chinese game that's competing with Kancolle.

And though most of you (probably all of you) know this, then just for completeness, "Si vis pacem, para bellum" is a Roman aphorism that means "If you seek peace, prepare for war." The 9x19 Parabellum pistol cartridge is named for this aphorism.

I couldn't stand either ceremony extolling the supposed virtue of
these megalomaniac psychopaths; one willing to command every deluded
Japanese man, woman and child to their deaths so he could save his own
skin, the other an Honor-less wench who was willing to see her people
conquered if only to rule as a puppet monarch for the Continent.

I will toast Elizabeth's death as well.

And I will raise a glass to our Founders who, Praise the Lord, broke the
false religion and psychological yoke of self-styled God-Kings and
Emperors.

Whatever other faults the English monarchy has, 'God-kings' has not been an issue ever since the Glorious Revolution.

False.

The issue of Divine Right was an overriding Royal crutch leading right up to the American Revolution, long after the "Glorious Revolution".

It was during this time that British Loyalists (Tories), Parliamentarians, Aristocracy, the Anglican Church, etc, condemned Americans in religious terms - and these pronouncements were perfectly in keeping with the over-arching philosophy of the time:

A) It is God's Will that the King rules.

B) The King delegates this Power to his Lords/Nobles/Aristocracy.

C) The Lords/Nobles/Aristocracy govern the King's "subjects" (a term derived from the latin "subiugare" which literally means "to place under the yoke").

This is not a philosophy of causality, but one of temporal and spiritual resolution. "The way things are" or "God's Will" so to speak.

So it was perfectly normal for the Church of England (actually, anybody of official or high position to include bureaucrats and academics) to swear allegiance to the King (the religious icon and head of the Established Religion and Imperial Church) under God and with hand on the Good Book; to obey/support him in all things in accordance to that holy Oath, including the condemnation of heretics like George Washington.

Today, Americans swear a derived Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution, not to a King. The Oath of Supremacy alone would outrage Americans if they were taught the heresies of the British Empire.

For the British in 1776 (and British Loyalists), the American rebels weren't just committing treason.

For the British, they were committing an act against God.

By the reckoning of both sides, the American Revolution was a religious war which sought (and succeeded) to turn the prevailing World Order upside-down.

A) It is God's Will that the King People rule.

B) The King People delegate this Power to the Nobles/Lords/Aristocracy Legislature/Judiciary/Government.

C) The Nobles/Lords/Aristocracy Legislature/Judiciary/Government submits Laws to the King President.

The Glorious Revolution had nothing to do with this awakening (jsut as Magna Carta had nothing to do with our Founding documents).

It is one thing for a supposed God-King to be stripped of Power by men who seek themselves to be God-Kings, who then reinstate a separate system based on the same phony Divine Right to delude a subjugated "peasantry".

But it is entirely another matter for an otherwise unremarkable and fallible man to hold in his hands the Divine Right of a King - only to relinquish it willingly. That is a moment that can truly be called "Divine", for it broke the spell of any future God-King over the American People.

I have no problem with getting side-tracked and debating along with someone if they decide to go off on tangents, but given some blog-owner might not appreciate long-winded responses to loaded, but off-topic, jibes...let's get back on topic:

Elizabeth II, God bless her, has been Queen of England (and Scotland and Canada and Australia and Wales and not the United States) my whole life.

Yesterday the voters of the UK decided there should continue to be a UK for Elizabeth to be Queen of.

Steven, these are statements based on a false assumption.

You assume, if obliquely, that Elizabeth II would be pleased with the Brexit vote to leave the EU.

You are wrong.

Aside from the fact that the postwar British Crown is historically for European integration, this is more about the Queen Mother and her regnant daughter personally, rather than a prejudice of history going back before the hundred Year's War. It's their personal history; specifically, their role in the pre-war and WW2 era where one faction favored allying with the United States (led by King Edward and his understudy, Winston Churchill) and the other faction which envisioned a European alliance (led by the Queen Mother and her understudy, Neville Chamberlain).

Long story short, the Queen Mother, George, and their daughter have ever been supportive of integration on the continent in the interests of Her Majesty's Royal Court. And when that plan failed spectacularly, instead of doing everything in their power to prevent disaster and at the knowing cost to their subjects, their one unerring concern was to exile Edward to protect their reign.

I don't care about the British People (We are not "cousins", and I am not enthusiastic about the Brexit result for differing reasons), but there is something wanton and unseemly about foreigners who sell out their own people - even when they're selling out to my country.

June 16, 2016

Today's search term is "out of frame censoring" and what that means is that the picture stops too soon. You want to scroll more but can't because there's nothing more to see.

Chizumatic is not responsible for keyboard damage caused by pounding on the scroll key. (Also, pretty much everything below the fold is NSFW; just not as NSFW as it could have been if only the artist had added another couple hundred pixels at the bottom.)

June 14, 2016

Cheesecake -- revealed secrets

When I was a kid there were advertisements in my comic books for X-ray glasses, which -- they claimed -- allowed you to see through women's clothing. Only $5! Wow! (and lots of other exclamation points!)

And I always wondered. You know, it would be pretty cool, wouldn't it? And it isn't all that much money; it seems improbable that it would work, but maybe, just maybe...

I never ordered anything like that. For one thing, in second grade I wasn't actually all that interested in girls. For another, my allowance was only 25 cents a week, so even $5 was pretty steep. (And anyway, I always spent it on candy at George's Store.) But I've always wondered.

Well, we have the magic of Japanese fan artists to let us know. Today's search term is "x-ray_glasses", and it won't even cost you $5.

June 09, 2016

Cheesecake: No capes!

A cape says "presence". A cape says, "power". A cape says, "I'm a badass." A cape says, "I'm not afraid of being sucked into a jet engine". (Or if it's Lina Inverse, "Jet engine? What's a jet engine?" Or if it's Ricotta Elmar, "Jet Engine? I haven't invented that yet.")

A cape says, "The rest of my FRP costume is too skimpy and I'm cold." Today's search term is "cape".

3
I think C.C. of Geass really has put the product placement on the map. For some reason studios had difficult time lining up agreements before Geass. Once the Pizza Hut thing happened, all the oddly mis-spelled names suddenly corrected themselves.

The manga is like that, too, and it makes me wonder if the mangaka is actually getting payola for it, or if it's just motorcycle porn for the readers. I don't remember a single instance of Bland-Name Products.

June 02, 2016

Today's search term is "Race Queen" because "Pit Babe" turns up no hits. (Plus an ever-lengthening list of exclusions.)

I'm not sure this really should count, but it's nice and it had that tag on it, so WTH...

Pacific Racing Team hired the GuP group to make a bunch of pictures of the GuP girls in Pacific Racing livery. It became a meme and fan artists started contributing, like this one. Some of the genuine ones below the fold.

2
While Nozomi of the Love Live! team fits right in, Maki seems a bit too mature, compared to how she should look.

Posted by: cxt217 at June 02, 2016 06:02 PM (Ceqix)

3
I can't escape them. The idols, the idols; there are hundreds of them (literally; I have a picture somewhere of all the Idolmaster girls and it's huge, and that's just one franchise) and I don't know them all (and don't want to) so it's not surprising a few slip in now and again.

But yeah, Nuku Nuku was from a different archaeological era, so to speak. Not really notable in Japan and only notable here for being one of the first titles to come out commercially in the US. Only us old men even remember it.

BTW, I actually won the Kiyora card that you placed 3rd from the top. It's an SR. But, not quite as fortunately, I also won another Kiyora SR, which looks almost exactly like that but has eyes closed. Although both are SRs, formally they are different cards and cannot be merged. Since my account is unverified, I cannot trade off one of them and I'll have to use it up.

As for that that Kotaku article, be careful. One of the characters pictured in there
is not a girl.

May 12, 2016

Cheesecake -- Tenkomimi!

I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but there's more to life than catgirls. There are also fox girls, who are sometimes kitsune and sometimes tenko. And they're especially awesome if they have more than one tail! (Today's search term is "fox tail".)

"If you make a fool of yourself in front of a cat, he will sneer at you, if you are sober; he will leave the room if you are drunk. If you make a fool of yourself in front a dog, he will make a fool of himself, too.”-- Chuck Jones

A cat loves you for what you can give it. A dog loves you for what you are.

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Yes, the hand gesture; it's their version of "throwing the horns" (I'm sure the gesture didn't originate with them, though).

They're a metal/idol band. Whose latest album made the Top 40 album chart a couple weeks ago here in the USA... the first time a Japanese album did that since that "Sukiyaki" song back in the 60s. Their cult following is... cultish.

Usually when I do these things I get enough candidates by going maybe 15 pages in, but this time I had to go about 30.

One reason was that there were a hell of a lot of pictures of one particular character I didn't want to include. One of the bad guys in Witch Craft Works (who did a heel-face turn) was a foxgirl, and she seems to be a fan-artist favorite.